"Oh, anything. Some coffee and toast, perhaps. I dare say you won't believe it—you are so unsympathetic—but I was frightfully ill last night. I don't know how I got to bed; I was quite insensible for a time—all from a narcotic that I had taken for neuralgia——"
"I'll go and get your breakfast ready," said Janetta abruptly. "I will send it up as soon as I can."
She left the room, unheeding some murmured grumbling at her selfishness, and shut the door behind her. On the landing it must be confessed that she struck her foot angrily on the floor and clenched her hands, while the color flushed into her mobile, sensitive little face. There was nothing that Janetta hated more than a lie. And her stepmother was lying to her now.
She sent up the breakfast tray, and did not re-enter the room for some time. When at last she came up, Mrs. Colwyn had had the fire lighted and was sitting beside it in a rocking-chair, with a novel on her lap. She looked up indolently as Janetta entered.
"Going out?" she said, noticing that the girl was in her out-door wraps. "You are always gadding."
"I came to speak to you before I went out," said Janetta, patiently. "I am going to the stationer's, and to the Beaminster Argus Office. I mean to make it well known in the town that I want to give music and singing-lessons. And, if possible, I shall give them here—at our own house."
"You'll do nothing of the sort!" said Mrs. Colwyn, shrilly. "I'll not have a pack of children about the house playing scales and singing their Do, Re, Mi, till my head is fit to split. You'll remember, Miss, that this is my house, and that you are living on my money, and behave yourself."
"Mamma," said Janetta, steadily, advancing a step nearer, and turning a shade paler than she had been before, "please think what you are saying. I am willing to work as hard as I can, and earn as much as I can. But I dare not go away from home—at any rate for long—unless I can feel sure that—that what happened last night—will not occur again."
"What happened!—what happened last night?—I don't know what you mean."
"Don't say that, mamma: you know—you know quite well. And think what a grief it would have been to dear father—what a disgrace it will be to Joe and Nora and the little ones and all of us—if it ever became known! Think of yourself, and the shame and the sin of it!"